The Current Status of World Hunger

3 months ago Rohit Shetty Comments Off on The Current Status of World Hunger

Where does starvation exist in the world today? What are some of the causes of world hunger? Are citizens of developed countries donating monetarily to the ongoing relief efforts? In this article, I will address these questions with the hope that by creating an understanding of the current world hunger situation, morally conscious individuals will do their part in contributing to an eradication of this unseen suffering.

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Other causes of world hunger are related to the globalized system of food production. The globalize system of food production and trade favors a reliance on export crops while discriminating against small-scale farmers and subsistence crops. Many third world countries export out too much food while concomitantly not keeping enough food to sustain their own people.


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AIDS is a significant cause of hunger. In societies affected by AIDS, famine is more deadly and difficult to combat. Why is this so? AIDS attacks the most productive individuals within society. Fewer productive people within the society means fewer individuals to work the jobs that involve food production. This is one contributor to the starvation currently taking place in Africa.

Weather plays a major role in terms of the prevalence of starvation. Areas of drought lead to non-useable land with subsequent famine. This is well known. But less well known is that floods can also lead to starvation. Crops can be flooded and therefore destroyed, which in essence produces the same result as drought. In both cases, weather can produce a complete lack of self-sufficiency.


The causative factors of world hunger are numerous, and certain factors change from year to year, therefore at any given time, some areas may be more prone than others. The extent of drought, flood, internal conflicts, and war with neighboring countries can vary over time. Therefore, these factors incorporate a variable effect on the degree to which inhabitants of susceptible countries suffer from starvation.






In this region, extreme poverty has been further exacerbated by a political crisis, floods, tropical storms, and hurricanes.

Horn of Africa:

An estimated 11 million people in the Horn of Africa “are on the brink of starvation” because of severe drought and war. Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia need food aid, water, new livestock and seeds. This is a major hunger crisis in development.




The recent earthquake coupled with a severe winter has produced starvation conditions. Recently, mudslides have hampered relief efforts.

North Korea:

Food insecurity caused by the countries economic problems is compounded by unpredictable and severe weather conditions. To date, the North Korean government has failed in its duty to provide for its starving people. The North Korean government has actually refused foreign aid.


A 40-year civil conflict and the illegal drug trade have caused mass displacement and poverty.

Democratic Republic of Congo:




Southern Africa:


These are the areas of the world which are currently suffering the highest levels of malnutrition and hunger. With this understanding of where relief efforts are needed, we must address the question of individual responsibility. Are individuals of developed countries donating to relief efforts? Most morally conscious individuals donate to relief efforts when the problem is presented to them.

A major problem in the relief effort is the general population of developed countries not knowing about the current hunger crisis. News organizations, more specifically television news, are not giving enough attention to the global hunger situation. While an in-depth discussion as to the reasons for this is outside the purview of this article, a few points can be made.

Evidently, the American TV news organizations, do not think world hunger is much of a story since starvation is a daily occurrence. I suspect, from the perspective of these news organizations, that 24,000 people per day dying from hunger is not a big enough news story. When 1,386 people died from Hurricane Katrina, the news coverage was enormous. Five months after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, TV news organizations were still squeezing all they could out of this story. Granted this was an obvious tragedy, but an even bigger tragedy, much bigger, is going on in Africa and the general public does not even know about it.



